By Antony Paone
MEAUX, France (Reuters) – French doctor Christian Allard has noted a side-effect from the record numbers of COVID-19 infections sweeping the country – some people are cancelling appointments for booster doses at his vaccination centre because they have tested positive.
Public health authorities in Europe and North America are encouraging people to get the vaccine booster doses as the best protection against surging rates of infection, driven in particular by the Omicron coronavirus variant.
France recorded a record 208,000 new daily cases on Tuesday, with the health minister describing a “tsunami” of infection.
At the public vaccination centre he runs in Meaux, a town 50 km (31 miles) east of Paris, Allard said local pharmacists told him around 30% of the people they were testing for COVID-19 were turning out to be positive. “It’s unheard of,” he told Reuters on Wednesday.
He said that on Tuesday around 20 people came to his vaccination centre to get a first dose, after rising infections prompted them to put aside their hesitations about the jab.
But he added: “There is a second consequence, that is that there are people who had appointments to get their booster and who have cancelled, quite simply because they had been tested positive.”
He did not give a number for cancellations. It was not clear if this phenomenon was happening elsewhere, or affecting nationwide vaccination numbers.
According to figures reported by French public health authorities, the seven-day average of people getting a COVID-19 vaccine each day is around 22,000. That is down from a peak in the days immediately before Christmas, but around the same level as earlier in December.
Manon Spasaro, a student, had her booster shot at the Meaux centre on Wednesday. “It’s getting more and more worrying, with more people getting infected every day,” she said.
(Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Alex Richardson)
